I heard the dry gagging behind me and saw Arthur with his back to the body, hunched over, hands to his mouth. I bumped him away, saying, “Stop it! Not in here, you damn fool!”
With a struggle he gained control. I sent him to wait out in the screened cage. I hobbled into the kitchen and, with my thumb nail, turned the lights off. It’s what they so often do in the night. Maybe some forlorn fading desire to keep the darkness back. But if they could turn on all the lights in the world, it wouldn’t help them. I knew where I’d most probably find her. She was in the empty tub, and had slid almost flat, head over on her shoulder. She wore a floor-length orange housecoat, with white collar and cuffs, buttoned neatly and completely from throat to hem. It had been a good vibrant color for her swarthy handsomeness. She had fixed her hair, made up her mouth. The dark stain between her breasts, and slightly to the left was teacup size, irregular, with one small area of wet sheen remaining. I bent and put the back of my hand against her calm forehead, but there was no warmth. The weapon, a 22 caliber Colt Woodsman with a long target barrel lay against her belly, the butt under her right wrist. She was barefoot. Though she had fixed herself up for dying, there were marks she could not conceal, swollen lips, blue bruise on the cheek, long scratch on the throat marks of that long hard use.
I sat on the edge of the tub. Dishonor before death. And more effective with that popgun than she would ever know. Two shots, even with the barrel against the target, seldom kill two people. Her death was not as messy as her husband’s. Heart wounds give a tidier result. To prove a guess, I went to the shower stall. The soap was moist. There were water droplets on the shower walls. A big damp yellow towel had been put neatly on a rack. So, after she had heard Boone Waxwell drive off, she had dragged herself out of bed and plodded in and taken a shower, probably just as hot as she could endure it, scrubbing herself mercilessly. Dry off. Go take the pretty housecoat from the closet and put it on. Sit at your dressing table, and fix your hair and your bruised mouth. The mind is numb. Get up and walk through the house, room to room, turning on the lights. Stop and look at the snoring husband. Breadwinner, mate, protector. Pace some more. Reach deep for the rationalizations. Women have been raped before. It hasn’t killed them. There is a legal answer. Let the police handle it. Turn him in.
“Now let me get this straight, Mrs. Watts. Waxwell was there from ten something last night until two or three this morning? And you claim that during that time you were repeatedly raped, during that whole time your husband was sound asleep in front of the television set? And Waxwell was a client of your husband? And you had met him before? And he left his car parked at your house, a very conspicuous car, all that time?”
So she paces and tries to think clearly, and she knows that if she does nothing, Waxwell will be back. Next week or next month, he will be back, again and again, as he promised he would.
And that brings her to the thing she has been trying so desperately to force out of her mind. Had he taken her quickly, she could have merely endured him, been a helpless vessel for him. But he was so damned sly and knowing, so crafty and so patient that each time, even the last time, he had awakened the traitor body so that while the soul watched the body gasped and strained to hungry climax, to dirty joy, grasping powerfully.
So she would pace and stop to look at the husband who had let that hunger in her grow so big she could betray herself. And then…
I found the note on her dressing table. Her personal stationery, monogrammed. A downhill scrawl with an eyeshadow pencil. “God forgive me. There is no other choice left. My darling was asleep and felt nothing. Sincerely, Vivian Harney Watts.”
On the other side of the room, beyond the plundered bed, the lowest drawer of his chest of drawers was open. Cartridges a-spill from a red and green cardboard box. Extra clip. Little kit with gun oil and collapsible cleaning rod. The shells were medium longs, hollow-point. So, with luck, the one she used on herself might not have gone through her to chip or stain the tub. I went back in and cupped the nape of her neck and pulled her up far enough to see. The back of the orange housecoat was unmarked. I made my gimpy hitching way out to the screened cage.
“She’s dead too. I have some things to do. I’ll try to make it fast.”
“D-Do you need help?”
I told him no. I went back and looked for signs of Waxwell. He would not go without leaving some trace. Like a dog, he would mark the boundaries of the new area he had claimed. But I found nothing, decided I needed nothing. First, on a table by the bedroom door, I made a little pile of things to take away. The note, the gun, the other things from the drawer that belonged with the gun. By the time I had gotten her half out of the tub, I wished I could depend on Arthur to help me with this sort of grisly problem. She was a very solid woman. She had not begun to stiffen. Death gave her a more ponderous weight. Finally I was on my feet with her in my arms. Her dead forehead lolled over to rest against the side of my chin. Carefully bracing the bad leg, and willing the bad arm to carry its share, I hobbled into the bedroom with her. I put her on the bed.
Out across the back yard the morning was a pearl pale shade of gray. I closed the draperies. She was on her back on the bed. I grasped the hem of the housecoat and with one hard wrench tore it open to the waist. Fabric ripped, and the small white buttons rattled off the walls and ceiling. I tucked the bottom of the housecoat up under her, pulled it up around her waist. She lay in dead abandon. On the white of her hips and upper thighs were the myriad blue bruises left by Waxwell’s strong fingers. Begging silent forgiveness, I thoroughly tousled the black hair and, with my thumb, smeared the fresh lipstick on her dead mouth. She had gotten all prettied up to die. In the bedroom lights I could see little segments of dark blue iris where the lids were not quite closed. Sorry I ruined the housecoat. Sorry they’ll see you like this, Vivian. But you’ll like the way it works out. I promise you, honey. They’ll pretty you up again for burying. But not in orange. That’s a color to be alive in. To be in love in. To smile in. They won’t bury you in it.
I tipped the dressing table bench over. Using a tissue, I picked up a jar of face cream and cracked the dressing table mirror. I turned the other lights out, left just one of the twin lamps on the dressing table on, and shoved the shade crooked so that it shone toward her, making highlights and deep shadows on the tumble of dead woman.
I crammed the stuff from the table into my pockets. I left one light on in the living room, a corner lamp with an opaque shade. Day was beginning to weaken the lights. With my thumbnail I turned the sound control on the television until the hiss of non-broadcast was loud. We left. I saw no one on the way to the car, or when Arthur drove us back up Clematis Drive.
“What did you do?” he asked.
“She didn’t live long enough to have her chance to decoy him off his place. I’ve given her a chance to do it dead.”
On the north edge of town, up the trail, I had him pull over and park near a phone booth near the curbing, at a gas station showing only a night light. I had one dime in change. Just enough. The sergeant answered by giving his name.
I pitched my voice lower than usual. “Look, you want to do me a favor, you write down a license number, okay?”
“Give me your name, please.”
‘’I shoulda phoned you hours ago. Look, I can’t sleep. Maybe it’s nothing. But the thing is, I don’t want to get mixed up in anything. I don’t want to get involved, see?“
“If you’d tell me where you’re calling from.”
“Knock it off, Sergeant. Write down the number, hey?”